“How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start
When memory plays an old tune on the heart!”

Old Dobbin, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

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Eliza Cook4

British writer 1818–1889

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“Play us a tune on an unbroken spinet, and let the bells ring, let the bells ring! Play music now: play us a tune on an unbroken spinet. Do not make echoes of forgotten time, do not strike music from old broken keys, do not make ghosts with faded tinklings on the yellowed board; but play us a tune on an unbroken spinet, play lively music when the instrument was new, let us see Mozart playing in the parlor, and let us hear the sound of the ladies' voices. But more than that; waken the turmoil of forgotten streets, let us hear their sounds again unmuted, and unchanged by time, throw the light of Wednesday morning on the Third Crusade, and let us see Athens on an average day.”

Thomas Wolfe book Of Time and the River

Of Time and the River (1935)

“music's power
Is little felt in sunlit hour;
But hear its voice when hopes depart,
Like swallows, flying from the heart
On which the summer's late decline
Has set a sadness and a sign;......
How deeply will the spirit feel
The lute, the song's sweet-voiced appeal;
And how the heart drink in their sighs
As echoes they from Paradise.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Canto IV
The Troubadour (1825)

“It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary… to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

As quoted in Teacher's Treasury of Stories for Every Occasion (1958) by Millard Dale Baughman, p. 69
1950s

“So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love-tune.”

John Greenleaf Whittier Maud Muller

Maud Muller (1856)

“Life's a show and we all play a part
And when the music starts
We open up our hearts”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

“Sweet is the memory of distant friends! Like the mellow rays of the departing sun, it falls tenderly, yet sadly, on the heart.”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

“I never learned how to tune a harp, or play upon a lute; but I know how to raise a small and inconsiderable city to glory and greatness.”

Themistocles (-524–-459 BC) Athenian statesman

As quoted by Plutarch, in Lives as translated by J. Langhorne and W. Langhorne (1836), p. 84 http://books.google.com/books?id=UFROAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA84 <br class="br">Variant translation: 'Tis true, I never learned how to tune a harp, or play upon a lute, but I know how to raise a small and inconsiderate city to glory and greatness. <br class="br"> Plutarch's Themistocles, 2:3 http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0007.tlg010.perseus-eng1:2 "...tuning the lyre and handling the harp were no accomplishments of his, but rather taking in hand a city that was small and inglorious and making it glorious and great" "...λύραν μὲν ἁρμόσασθαι καὶ μεταχειρίσασθαι ψαλτήριον οὐκ ἐπίσταται, πόλιν δὲ μικρὰν καὶ ἄδοξον παραλαβὼν ἔνδοξον καὶ μεγάλην ἀπεργάσασθαι." (at Perseus Project)

“Good, old-fashioned ways keep hearts sweet, heads sane, hands busy.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

“How sweet on the breeze of the evening swells
The vesper call of those soothing bells,
Borne softly and dying in echoes away,
Like a requiem sung to the parting day.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(22nd September 1821) Bells
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

“So in the heart,
When, fading slowly down the past,
Fond memories depart,
And each that leaves it seems the last;
Long after all the rest are flown,
Returns a solitary tone,—
The after-echo of departed years,—
And touches all the soul to tears.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

The After-Echo, st. 2 (1871).

“How cruelly sweet are the echoes that startWhen memory plays an old tune on the heart!”

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Eliza Cook4

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“How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start
When memory plays an old tune on the heart!”